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Car smashes into three-day-old Bixi bike stand

A Lexus sedan jumped a curb and crashed into the new Bixi bicycle-sharing stand across from City Hall on Monday afternoon, damaging six bikes.

Workers replace some of the damaged stand and bikes after a car crashed into the new Bixi stand on Bay St., north of Queen St., on Monday. (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR)

By Daniel DaleUrban Affairs Reporter

Mon., May 9, 2011

A Lexus sedan jumped a curb and crashed into the three-day-old Bixi bicycle-sharing stand across from City Hall on Monday afternoon, damaging six bikes.

The driver was uninjured.

Bixi spokesman Michel Philibert said the Bay St. stand may have prevented the car from crashing into pedestrians walking on the sidewalk adjacent to the roadside row of bikes.

“Someone told me that the position of the station saved lives. Because if the station had not been there — the station blocked the car. It’s not a good event, but for that, the station was there,” he said.

Bixi launched last Tuesday in Toronto. Surveying the carnage on his non-Bixi bike, City Hall information technology employee Imad Malaeb, 47, said the crash would be helpful to the fledgling operation.

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“It’s so bad, but it’s good publicity,” Malaeb said. “Despite the sadness, people are stopping, watching, looking, and now they’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow.”

A Bixi rider who wheeled by the scene was less sanguine. “Where’s the driver? I’d have given him a piece of my mind,” said the man in his 20s, who would not provide his name. “They spend so much money building these, and then two days later this is what happens?”

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